The present invention is related to childcare and to the encouragement of children to eat and more specifically to a child""s feeding bowl.
Feeding children is particularly difficult in that children can taken instant dislikes to particular types of food no matter how good, nutritionally, they are for them. It is known to form foods into various pleasing shapes, or incorporate them in novelties and the like devices in an effort to encourage the children to eat them. Thus, for example, many a cereal is provided in shapes of animals and various objects to encourage children to eat them.
In other instances, the packaging is constructed in a novel way to, for example, provide a toy or something that the children may play with, after the contents have been eaten. It does not take the child long to realise that if he or she wishes to have the toy, then what they must do is to dispose of the food as quickly as possible and preferably without any contact whatsoever with their stomach.
A further problem with the feeding of children is the low boredom threshold of most children who, while they may be amenable to eating their meal, generally get bored very quickly with the mundane task of eating.
It has long been recognized by child carers and in particular, child psychologists, that if children are to be encouraged to eat, then they must be encouraged by factors external to those that may drive an adult to eat such as nutrition, health improvement, enjoyment of the actual food and the like. While children may enjoy very sweet things such as confectionary, ices, etc., they, generally speaking, are not that keen on the taste of many a food which is required to provide them with a healthy balanced diet. It often takes many years and indeed there is many an adult, well out of his or her childhood, who still hankers after the food of his or her youth and will reject much more palatable and much more nutritious food.
It has long been appreciated that children enjoy playing games and if they can be encouraged to learn by playing games that this is particularly advantageous. For example there are many nutrition and exercise education games and methods of playing them, such as, for example, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,460,179 (Hafer), which shows essentially a target game which can teach players important dietary information. U.S. Pat. No. 4,986,757 (Mueller) is a board game aimed at three to six year olds which is designed to teach and promote good nutrition and exercise habits in the young. U.S. Pat. No. 2,561,594 (Pokras) illustrates an improved construction of child""s dish which is adapted to retain a toy or some other prize for the child, which is received by the child only when he/she has eaten substantially all the food in the dish. However, all of these are of limited benefit. The latter U.S. Pat. No. 2,561,591 (Pokras) is probably of the most benefit in encouraging children in each, however, the construction is such is that it is relatively easy for the child not to eat the food and still obtain the prize.
The present invention is directed towards providing means to encourage children to eat food and in particular to encourage them to eat food that they do not consider particularly palatable or more properly, food which their carers consider necessary that they should eat to ensure a nutritionally balanced diet.
According to the invention there is provided a child""s feeding bowl comprising:
a base vessel;
a plurality of separate food compartments;
a chance controlled means for identifying a compartment for selecting a food compartment for a child; and
operating means for causing the change controlled means to operate.
The advantage of this is that by using a chance control means for identifying a compartment the person supervising the feeding, whether it be a parent or a carer, has an opportunity to play a game with the child, or indeed cause the child to play the game and thus give some interest to the child in the feeding.
Ideally the child""s feeding bowl comprises:
a central core portion for the base vessel;
a plurality of food compartments arranged side-by-side around the central core portion in the base vessel;
an indicator means rotatably mounted on the core and capable of identifying a chosen compartment to form the chance controlled means and its operating means.
Essentially this indicator can operate somewhat similar to a roulette wheel indicator. The indicator can include a motor and can have for example a removable knob to present a visually attractive figure to a child such as a carbon character or an animal. Again this provides amusement and interest to the child.
It is also envisaged that the chidl""s feeding bowl could comprise:
food compartments formed in a separate integral food vessel rotatable about the central core;
a motor for rotating the food vessel;
a cover removably mounted on the base vessel to cover the food compartments;
a closure in the cover forming a pivotal lid to expose the contents of one food compartment; and means associated with the motor to open the lid on completion of rotation of the food vessel.
The advantage of this is that the child can see all the other foods being presented, but cannot get at the foods and therefore will try to eat the food that has been presented to it in an efficient manner and will then want to play the game against in an affort to get the food he or she has already seen and desires to eat.
Preferably, different coloured lights can be mounted on the central core portion and there can be means provided to cause the lights to switch on and off as the food vessel rotates further attracting the child. Indeed the motor can be used to open the lid.
In another way of carrying out the invention, the child""s feeding bowl may comprise:
food compartments formed on a separate turntable rotatable about the central core portion;
a motor for rotating the turntable;
a closure formed by a lid for each food compartment; and
means associated with the motor to allow opening of one of the lids on stopping of the turntable after rotation by the motor.
When such a turntable is used, the food compartments formed in the turntable may represent any visually attractive object, such as, for example, transport vehicle shapes, train carriages and so on.
Ideally there may also be a separate compartment allowing a treat to be stored, which treat can only be accessed when the other compartments have had the food eaten from then.
In a still further embodiment of the invention, the child""s feeding can comprise:
a base vessel;
a central core portion in the base vessel;
a plurality of food compartments arranged side-by-side around the central core portion on the base vessel, each compartment having a unique identifier formed by visible indicia;
a closure formed by a separate lid for each food compartment;
a dice agitator mounted on the central core; and
a dice contained within the agitator and having indicia corresponding to the compartment indicia.
Using a dice and dice agitator allows the child to play the game himself or herself and is one of the simplest ways of carrying out the invention. Very often it is advantageous to provide five compartments and a dice having six faces, the indicia on one face corresponding to the indicia of all the compartments.
Ideally the food compartments are arranged in a separate integral dish having a plurality of partition walls, forming the food compartments and as mentioned above, biasing means may be provided with each closure toward the lid into an open position and similarly catch means and a release tab for each lid may also be provided suitably connected together for operation. Again this allows the child to carry out the active task of feeding himself or herself.
Again it is envisaged that differently coloured indicator lights may be associated with compartments and when operating the feeding bowl, the light may switch on and off, the lifts may be used to indicate a particular compartment that may be accessed, they may simple to bused to provide a pleasing show, or any other suitable arrangement.
Further the feeding bowl may also incorporate a music player which can play turns in certain situations.
While in many of the embodiments according to the invention the vessel will be circular in shape having a central core, this is not by any means essential, but any suitable shape may be used.
Further the invention provides a method for encouraging child to each comprising:
placing food in a number of separate food compartments or vessels; and
playing a game of chance with the child so as to identify the compartment within which is the food which has to be eaten by the child.
As has been stated already, playing games with children is a pleasing task and therefore they tend to play games while eating and this encourages them to eat. Very often when playing the game the child in fact forgets that he or she is eating.
It is particularly advantageous that the food in the compartment is not necessarily visible to the children as this further increases the mystery and encourages the child to eat.